The latest such change order, a $4.7 million cost increase to build rail’s three Ewa-most stations, was approved by the HART board Thursday. It aims to compensate rail contractor Nan, Inc. for 235 days’ worth of construction delays, estimated at $20,000 a day.

Construction at a Waipahu rail station in December 2017.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

The delays stem to February 2017, when crews discovered that underground water lines near the future stations weren’t where engineering firm AECOM had put them in its rail plans, according to Frank Kosich, HART’s design and construction director.

That problem led to several months of added design work in early 2017. Then, crews had to wait until September 2017 — the next available time that Hawaiian Electric Co. could shut off the overhead power lines there — to relocate the power lines underground, Kosich said.

Meanwhile, Nan had to wait for that process to finish before it could start building stations.

HART’s contingency fund, part of its $8.16 billion budget, will cover those costs, according to the agency’s executive director, Andrew Robbins. HART is currently aiming to launch interim service along the first 10 miles of the route, from Kapolei to Aloha Stadium, by the end of 2020.

Savings On Stations Evaporated

In 2015, HART officials were stunned when the bids they opened to build all nine westside stations came in more than $100 million over their budgeted amount. It was a sign that the project would soon face serious financial trouble.

But HART regrouped — literally. The rail agency canceled its original bid proposal and divided the nine stations into three separate groups, figuring that more construction firms could bid on the smaller work packages and thus offer lower, more competitive prices.

At first, the move appeared to pay off: By November 2015, when the bid to build the final trio of stations was awarded, the price to build all nine stations appeared to be $250.8 million. That was $43 million less than the bid to build all nine stations together.

“The good news, I would say, is I think our staff has finally got our arms around where we see the costs climbing,” HART’s then-CEO, Dan Grabauskas, said at the time.

Those cost reductions have disappeared, however. HART’s latest project report for November shows that the nine westside stations have seen some $18.5 million in change orders, including the $4.7 million increase that the board approved Thursday.

Additionally, HART has had to boost its contract with San Francisco-based PGH Wong, which inspects westside station and guideway work, by an extra $36 million, on top of its original $54 million deal. That’s largely to cover the costs for PHG Wong to handle work on all nine stations simultaneously, instead of sequentially, as originally agreed, HART officials explained last year.

It’s also a direct result of the decision to split the nine stations into three separate packages, they said.

On Thursday, Robbins said that the project could expect to see more change orders related to westside station work in the future as HART looks to solve other design issues.

When she was the HART board’s chairwoman, Colleen Hanabusa warned that the city could face problems trying to acquire the Navy Drum site, where rail’s future operations center rests

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The HART board also met in executive session for about two hours Thursday, in part to discuss the agency’s possible condemnation of properties in town. The owner of one such property on South Street, Servco Pacific, submitted written testimony expressing its continued frustration with the process.

“Not only has Servco’s contact person with HART changed several times, but it seems that any time Servco has had any settlement discussions of substance with HART … some fairly major changes or modifications have occurred in HART’s negotiation position from the prior discussions,” Casey Ching, Servco’s Vice President for Corporate Properties, wrote to the board.

The board also received a closed-door update Thursday on what’s known as the Navy Drum site — a patch of Department of Hawaiian Homelands-owned land in Waipahu where the city has already built rail’s future 43-acre operations center.

The city still hasn’t acquired the property.

HART’s former board chairwoman, Colleen Hanabusa, had flagged that as a potentially big issue in 2015, warning that U.S. Department of Interior officials might not approve a proposed land-swap for the city to own the property.

The board did not provide any updates on the matter after its executive session.

]]>Surviving The Ride On A Not-So-Bike-Friendly Islandhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/surviving-the-ride-on-a-not-so-bike-friendly-island/
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 10:01:42 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311399Editor’s Note: Civil Beat reporter Marcel Honore’s new transportation column, “Wayfinding,” offers a street-level look at the challenges of getting around Oahu and the neighbor islands. If you want to share your story ideas or experiences, send an email to mhonore@civilbeat.org This may have been a terrible mistake. The words flashed through my skull last month as […]

]]>Editor’s Note: Civil Beat reporter Marcel Honore’s new transportation column, “Wayfinding,” offers a street-level look at the challenges of getting around Oahu and the neighbor islands. If you want to share your story ideas or experiences, send an email to mhonore@civilbeat.org

This may have been a terrible mistake.

The words flashed through my skull last month as I entered the narrow, 3-mile stretch of Farrington Highway between Kapolei and Waipahu.

Suddenly, I was a sitting duck in a bike helmet. Cars and trucks roared past as I hugged the side of the road. There’s no shoulder there, so they had to veer almost entirely into the oncoming lane to pass me. Several veered back just in time to miss the approaching cars.

Everything felt a split-second from disaster.

Please don’t cause an accident. Please don’t cause an accident.

So began Civil Beat’s recent field experiment to determine just how easy it is to get across Oahu’s southern shore by bicycle.

Some months back, I’d asked the nonprofit Hawaii Bicycling League whether they knew of any brave souls who make the commute from West Oahu into town by bike and if Civil Beat could tag along. They couldn’t come up with a name.

Still, the idea nagged at me.

Rail to Ala Moana is at least seven years away. What if West Oahu drivers, perpetually stuck in traffic on the H1 Freeway, were willing to try an alternative? On this island with near-perfect weather and flat terrain near the coast, how feasible is it to bike toward or all the way into town?

So I decided to put myself in harm’s way and pedal across the shore, including Farrington (which, incidentally, HBL calls a “moderate stress” bike route).

Farrington Highway between Kapolei and Waipahu is a tight fit for cars and cyclists.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

The total route covered just over 18 miles, from downtown Kapolei to Sand Island Access Road in Kalihi Kai. The idea was to see whether it would work either as a full commute or for riders looking to travel just part of the way.

I biked all but two of those miles: In Waipahu, we briefly stopped the ride on Farrington and drove to a nearby park to film at a future bike route. In Aiea, where the Pearl Harbor Bike Path ends, we drove for about a mile where conditions on Kamehameha Highway were particularly stressful.

I don’t want to sound too discouraging. Overall, I came away feeling that Oahu’s cross-island bike route is on the cusp of working well for all kinds of cyclists.

If not for a few admittedly large trouble spots, even the casual riders who don’t wear spandex could cruise anywhere between Kapolei and Honolulu.

City officials have made a push in recent years to add more bikeways, but mostly in Honolulu’s urban core. Aiea, Pearl City, Waipahu, Ewa — the rest of the south shore is not yet well connected.

“We sometimes get comments that the bike lanes just end,” Chris Sayers, the city’s bicycle coordinator, said at a public meeting last month. “We’re getting better … but that’s one of the main goals” — to create more connections.

The Pearl Harbor Bike Path offers a smooth ride, but it doesn’t connect well to other nearby bike routes.

Ku'u Kauanoe/Civil Beat

About 1 percent of Oahu commuters get around by bike. It’s hovered at that rate for more than a decade, representing just under 6,000 people, according to U.S. Census data for 2012 to 2016. Several years back, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said he’d consider an increase to 5 percent successful, though that’s a very ambitious goal.

The greatest weather in the world won’t get more commuters on bikes unless there are safe and convenient routes available, planners say.

That road from Farrington into Waipahu is definitely dicey. So is Kamehameha Highway just past the Pearl Harbor visitor center.

The scenic Pearl Harbor Bike Path, meanwhile, is a fun and easy ride. You zip past shoreline homes, parks, urban farm space and wetlands — as well as factories, the future rail operations center and Waiau Power Plant. You get a feel for Central Oahu, in all of its contrasts, that’s impossible to grasp by car.

You also see plenty of abandoned cars.

Unfortunately, the 5-mile path doesn’t connect to other routes on either end. It materializes without any signage just east of Waipahu Depot Street, next to a Honolulu Fire Department maintenance facility, and then abruptly deposits you onto a Kamehameha Highway sidewalk below Aloha Stadium.

It’s a great asset. Without better connectivity, it will remain woefully underused.

A bit further east, Shimmick/Traylor/Granite workers are building the rail guideway into Kamehameha as the road approaches the airport. I don’t think I’ve ever been happy before to encounter road work. The construction slowed the traffic while I biked along.

As Kamehameha ended I faced two exciting options: 1) pedal into the left hand lane, as cars whiz by, in order to turn onto Radford Drive and stay on the bike route, or 2) get on the freeway?!

Wasn’t fun, but I opted to take the left at Radford.

Once safely past, there’s a friendly “Nimitz Viaduct Path” that runs 3.5 miles or so along Bougainville Drive and Nimitz Highway below the Airport Viaduct. But any cyclists looking to push beyond that path and into Kalihi have to run the gauntlet.

Just past the viaduct, Nimitz suddenly converts into what felt like a freeway offramp as I pedaled for about a mile past Keehi Lagoon.

Conditions quickly get dicey for cyclists on Nimitz Highway just past the airport viaduct.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

I wanted to get past this stretch to Sand Island Access Road as quickly as possible. A passing truck driver startled me with his horn — seemingly equal parts surprised and annoyed to encounter a cyclist there. HBL calls this spot a “high-stress connection.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

From that point, there’s a lane along Nimitz that cyclists can take farther into town and connect to Honolulu’s growing urban network of bike routes.

Promising Improvements

Some fixes are in the works to better connect Oahu’s bikeways, however.

One of the most promising is the state’s planned $11.5 million extension of the Leeward Bike Path, which will directly connect bike routes across Ewa Beach to the Pearl Harbor Bike Path.

The project includes a new bikeway that will hug the West Loch shore, plus a bridge that crosses Waikele Stream and leads to the Pearl Harbor path. Once it’s done, riders coming from Ewa Beach, including anyone who uses the existing bike path along Fort Weaver Road, will have their own route all the way to Aloha Stadium.

Still, Ewa Beach might be too far south and out of the way for cyclists coming from Makakilo and Kapolei. For them, braving Farrington would still be the most direct path into town.

Upgrades to that narrow highway aren’t arriving very soon, however. City officials say the design phase to widen the road there won’t happen until 2020.

Closer to town, Oahu’s 2018 bike plan update calls for extending the Pearl Harbor Bike Path to Arizona Memorial Place, as well as to install a protected bike lane along Salt Lake Boulevard to Puuloa Road.

Overall, the plan update includes nearly 190 miles of so-called “Priority 1” projects that the city aims to complete in the next five years.

These and other road hacks could help eliminate the drama described above. More importantly, it could open up new commuting possibilities for residents across Oahu, not just those living in town.

Anyone out there crazy enough to currently commute from Kapolei, Ewa Beach, or even farther west into town by bike — what did I miss?

For a future column, we’d also like to get your insights about being a pedestrian on Oahu. If you’re interested in sharing your experiences, please fill out the form below. We won’t publish any of your stories without your permission.

]]>The Story Behind Our New Transportation Columnhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/the-story-behind-our-new-transportation-column/
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 10:01:12 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311641It’s a daily island ritual, and it tests our collective aloha more and more each year. Every weekday, thousands of Oahu commuters rise before dawn, strap into their cars or trucks and hit the road. They do their best to beat some of the worst traffic in the country, heading to day jobs in one of the […]

]]>It’s a daily island ritual, and it tests our collective aloha more and more each year.

Every weekday, thousands of Oahu commuters rise before dawn, strap into their cars or trucks and hit the road. They do their best to beat some of the worst traffic in the country, heading to day jobs in one of the nation’s most expensive places to live.

Then, as dusk nears, they pray there’s no accidents, ill-timed road work or, worse, some cataclysmic event on the H-1 freeway to trap them inside their cars for even longer than the usual slog — hours lost from spending time with families.

Transportation affects people everywhere — but it really dominates our daily lives here on Oahu, living on a small, crowded island with such little space and so few options to get around.

With that in mind, we’re launching a new column today, “Wayfinding,” that offers a street-level look at Hawaii’s transportation challenges. The column will focus not just on policy, but also how we all manage to navigate across the islands. And we’ll occasionally offer some advice that might save you time and anxiety.

I’ve covered the transportation beat here on Oahu — first for the Star-Advertiser, now for Civil Beat — for nearly six years. That’s let me try out multiple modes of transportation, from boarding Oahu’s new driverless rail cars to sailing on the Hokulea.

I’d like to explore what’s on the horizon and what might work better. More importantly, I’d like your ideas and feedback.

Morning traffic crawls west on Beretania Street near the Punchbowl Street intersection.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Where else does the governor hold a press conference to unveil a brand new ZipMobile — and then it’s front-page news?

It happens on an island where ZipMobilebreakdowns and truck collisions with overpasses on a single freeway bring life to an abrupt and crushing standstill, cutting off thousands of residents from their homes. These repeated “carmageddon” incidents have seared themselves into our shared psyche.

Oahu’s future commuter rail line has long been touted by supporters as a game-changer — an alternative to using H-1 that will reshape the surrounding neighborhoods. But its completion to Ala Moana Center is at least seven years away. That assumes the beleaguered project doesn’t run into any more stumbling blocks.

Thousands of commuters depend on the state’s ZipMobile to ensure they can get to work and then home.

Marcel Honore/Civil Beat

So what can we do in the meantime? How do we make moving around here easier, whether that’s the epic bus commute from Waianae, getting to Ala Moana from the Lunalilo exit or circling Costco looking for a parking spot.

One such “hack” that’s visible across the landscape is Biki. Honolulu’s first major bike share system debuted in 2017 and has been successful so far, reporting 1 million rides in its initial 13 months of service and recently adding 33 more docking stations to the existing 100 around town.

Other innovations have had a rocky start. Those electric scooters that have landed for rent in other cities only lasted a week on Honolulu roads and sidewalks before abruptly suspending operation.

“Wayfinding” columnist Marcel Honore

Ku'u Kauanoe/Civil Beat

However, their brief appearance helped spur the creation of a new “Urban Mobility Working Group” to plan how to best roll out emerging transportation technologies here.

“There is more to multi-modalism than buses and trains and cars,” Honolulu’s Deputy Transportation Services Director Jon Nouchi said in a recent interview. Every neighborhood is unique and the transit solutions for each is going to be different.

We’re launching this column with a feature about bicycling and its commuting potential in Honolulu.

But I hope this will serve as a space for all of us to discuss Oahu’s distinct transportation hang-ups as well as potential fixes — whether we use our own cars, Uber or Lyft, TheBus or TheHandi-Van, Biki or our own two feet in a city that’s grown especially perilous for pedestrians.

Got ideas? Please send them along to mhonore@civilbeat.org. And mahalo for reading.

]]>Six-Figure Deal To Cover UH Rail Costs ‘Slipped Through The Cracks’https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/six-figure-deal-to-cover-uh-rail-costs-slipped-through-the-cracks/
Wed, 05 Dec 2018 10:01:13 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311812The agency overseeing Honolulu rail construction lost track of an agreement to reimburse the University of Hawaii for its rail-related costs, prompting the project’s board of directors to take steps Tuesday to budget for those expenses. Under the deal, signed in 2014, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation agreed to cover as much as $600,000 for UH […]

]]>The agency overseeing Honolulu rail construction lost track of an agreement to reimburse the University of Hawaii for its rail-related costs, prompting the project’s board of directors to take steps Tuesday to budget for those expenses.

The 20-mile, 21-station project is slated to run along the campuses of UH West Oahu, Leeward Community College, UH Manoa’s Urban Gardens in Pearl City and Honolulu Community College.

But the memorandum of understanding later “slipped through the cracks” at HART, as board member Terrence Lee described it during Tuesday’s Project Oversight Committee meeting. It had been signed under HART’s former executive director, Dan Grabauskas, who left the project in 2016.

Oahu’s future rail line cuts across numerous University of Hawaii properties, including the Leeward Community College campus in Waipahu.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

UH reminded the agency of the agreement about six months ago when it reported about $250,000 in rail-related expenses so far, according to Nicole Chapman, HART’s director of procurement and contracts.

“This is an unusual situation,” Chapman told the oversight committee Tuesday as it weighed approval of the costs. “This came as a surprise.”

Grabauskas’ eventual successor, Andrew Robbins, described the glitch as a “process issue” because in previous years not all of HART’s contracts went to Chapman’s desk for review.

The estimated $9.19 billion transit line is Hawaii’s largest-ever public works project, and the HART board has regularly approved multimillion-dollar change orders that far exceed these six-figure costs from UH.

But HART has also struggled with organizational problems in recent years, and turnover among top officials has been rampant during the height of construction. Audits and industry peer reviews have flagged those issues. HART’s latest leadership has touted internal reforms that they say make the agency run better.

Robbins didn’t directly blame Grabauskas for the latest development Tuesday, but he did point to gaps in the system at HART during Grabauskas’ tenure.

]]>Don’t Expect To See Those Green E-Scooters Again Anytime Soonhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/dont-expect-to-see-those-green-e-scooters-again-anytime-soon/
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 10:01:26 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311182In May, the electric rental scooters that had already descended on streets and sidewalks across other U.S. cities landed in Honolulu, where they drew record ridership in their first four days of service. Less than a week later, the so-called “e-scooters” were gone. Tech-company Lime opted to temporarily suspend its Honolulu operation after the city moved […]

]]>In May, the electric rental scooters that had already descended on streets and sidewalks across other U.S. cities landed in Honolulu, where they drew record ridership in their first four days of service.

Less than a week later, the so-called “e-scooters” were gone. Tech-company Lime opted to temporarily suspend its Honolulu operation after the city moved to shut it down, impounding Lime’s vehicles and threatening fines and jail time.

Now, the earliest those scooters could return, city officials say, would be sometime after the state legislative session ends next May.

That’s because state leaders would have to update Hawaii’s vehicle code, creating new classifications for the e-scooters and other emerging alternatives to cars, in order for them to legally operate here.

Currently, the state code is broad and lacks categories between a bicycle and a moped, explained Jon Nouchi, Honolulu’s deputy director for Transportation Services. “They don’t fit very nicely into any category,” he said Thursday of the e-scooters.

This motorized scooter from Lime was available for rent outside the Waikiki Aquarium in May, before the city shut the company’s operations down. The city currently considers them mopeds, which aren’t allowed on sidewalks.

Marcel Honore/Civil Beat

Earlier this year, however, the city laid out a detailed case for why Lime’s e-scooters could only be classified as mopeds in a lengthy letter to the company by Honolulu Corporation Counsel Donna Leong.

If the Lime e-scooters are actually mopeds then they require the same safety inspections, tags and license plates as any other moped — and they certainly can’t be left on the sidewalk, Leong’s May 17 letter said.

“The demands on the City’s sidewalks are increasing, and it is becoming more and more important to keep those sidewalks clear for their primary purpose — pedestrian passage — with limited exceptions,” she wrote.

Some riders — and the companies themselves — hail the devices as innovative, convenient and environmentally friendly alternatives for urban commuters looking to travel short distances. Others scorn them as a blight and nuisance that overtook city sidewalks in such overwhelming numbers that they created safety hazards.

City officials across the country have scrambled this year to catch up, enacting rules and pilot programs that generally limit the e-scooters’ numbers and speed to better control them.

But it’s not clear whether any other cities besides Honolulu consider the vehicles to be mopeds.

In Washington, D.C., for example, they are classified as nonmotorized “personal mobility devices” that can be used in the roadways and sidewalks outside of that city’s central business district, according to city representatives. The scooters’ speeds are capped at 10 mph.

In Denver, they’re considered “toy vehicles” that can only be used on the sidewalk. The city’s Public Works Department is looking to reclassify them so they might be used in bike lanes.

And in Los Angeles, the e-scooters are classified along the lines of a bike or some other nonmotorized or low-motorized vehicle, with speeds capped at 15 mph, so that Angelenos can ride the scooters in the city’s bike lanes, according to Mark Pampanin, a spokesman for Councilman David Ryu.

Biki, Honolulu’s largest bike sharing company, is part of a new working group looking at ways to accommodate alternative forms of transportation to cars.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

For the e-scooters to resume in Honolulu, they’ll at least have to shed the moped classification, Nouchi said.

“We’re not saying no can. We’re trying to figure out, if possible, how can,” he said Thursday. “This industry is so new that we’re not even a year old yet. I don’t think we’re behind the curve on this one — I think we’re right in the thick of things.”

Eight e-scooter companies, including Lime and one of its chief competitors, Bird, have so far reached out to city officials with interest in operating in Honolulu.

Bird said it has no expansion plans to announce but considers Honolulu a “great place” for its e-scooters. Lime still aims to provide “new mobility options in the near future” but currently doesn’t have an update, according to spokeswoman Mary Catherine Pruitt.

In the meantime, a new, city-led “Urban Mobility Working Group” aims to hash out the best way for e-scooters and various other emerging innovative “mobility devices” to use Honolulu’s streets and sidewalks.

“We’re looking at diversity,” said Nouchi, who launched the group with about 40 members so far. “We’re looking at anything that is not a car, that might be operated within our city. Our main point is where can they be stored, where can they be operated just so we can keep everyone safe.”

City and state agencies and nonprofits such as Ulupono Initiative,Blue Planet Foundation and Biki bike share are all part of the working group, according to Nouchi. Also participating are ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, as well as Bird and Lime.

There’s even a member looking to bring “tuk-tuks” to Honolulu — the auto rickshaws prevalent across Asia, Nouchi said.

So far, the group has only met once, on Oct. 24 at Blaisdell Center. Its next meeting is slated for January, around the time the legislative session begins, Nouchi said.

]]>HART Approves Rail’s Recovery Plan – Againhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/hart-approves-rails-recovery-plan-again/
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 04:55:34 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309203For a second year in a row, local rail leaders have approved a recovery plan that looks to get the island’s rail transit project back on track following years of runaway costs. But it’s still unclear whether rail’s federal partners will accept this latest attempt and, accordingly, release hundreds of millions of dollars needed to […]

The version passed Thursday looks to address the FTA’s lingering cost and schedule concerns, and to convince the agency to release rail’s remaining $744 million in federal funding.

Oahu’s rail guideway taking shape near Aloha Stadium.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Specifically, recovery plan “2.0” includes the extra $134 million that the FTA believes will be necessary to finish the state’s largest-ever public works project. It also pushes the full 20-mile transit line’s opening from December 2025 to September 2026, which the FTA considers to be a more realistic date.

HART officials disagree and maintain that they can deliver rail without those extra dollars and get it done by December 2025. Still, they’re looking to avoid being held in breach of contract by their federal partners — a move that could cost them some or all of their $1.55 billion in federal dollars.

“FTA will need to review the Recovery Plan to ensure it is reasonable and sufficient,” the federal agency offered in an email Thursday.

In September, the agency, running out of patience, gave HART until Nov. 20 to address the $134 million gap. In approving the recovery plan, the HART board got that done at its final meeting before the FTA’s deadline.

Here’s a table from the 2017 version of the recovery plan that broke down rail’s budget:

And here’s the new budget in the new recovery plan, with the numbers the FTA would want to see:

The updated table includes the FTA’s required $134 million. It also shows $31 million more in financing costs. To cover that, HART finance officials have projected that rail will receive $188 million more in state tax revenues than they did in their 2017 estimates. That’s largely based on the updated collections of those sources, according to HART Chief Financial Officer Robert Yu.

HART’s board members approved the recovery plan with no discussion Thursday.

Dispute Over Rail Dollars

Under Act 1, the rail’s financial bailout passed by state leaders last year, the comptroller has the discretion to review the rail project’s invoices and make sure the expenses are construction-related before those dollars get released to HART.

On Thursday, Yu told the HART board that the comptroller’s office, part of the state’s Department of Accounting and General Services, has rejected five invoices totaling between $600,000 and $700,000 so far. Those bills mostly relate to rail’s future fare-collection system and road repaving along Kamehameha Highway.

The problem, Yu explained, is that those are merely the first invoices for larger contract packages that could eventually total more than $30 million in work. If DAGS continues to reject those invoices, HART and the city could be left to cover that work instead.

HART Board Member Terrence Lee asked about the agency’s dispute with the state over rail construction dollars.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Part of the issue, Yu told the board, is that the fare-collection system will be shared with TheBus — and right now all of the development and testing for that system is happening on the public system. DAGS thus questions whether it’s a legitimate rail expense, Yu said.

“I can understand where they’re coming from, because right now all the work is being done on TheBus — the testing is being done on TheBus,” Yu said. “But the reality is … whatever testing’s being done also applies to rail too.”

Yu said that HART hopes to discuss the issue with DAGS staff soon.

In an email Thursday, DAGS officials said they’re simply complying with state law.

Kiewit Contracts Settled

The board also agreed to a $13.2 million negotiated settlement with Omaha-based Kiewit Infrastructure West. HART officials said that would resolve all of Kiewit’s remaining claims on its construction work across West Oahu, essentially wrapping up the rail project’s first three major construction contracts, dating back to as early as 2009.

Kiewit built the rail project’s first 10.5 miles of elevated, concrete-and-steel guideway, as well as the system’s rail operations center in Pearl City. Insiders in 2016 described the relationship between Kiewit and HART as acrimonious, asserting that the construction firm was “fed up” with the city.

One former project consultant said Kiewit’s Honolulu rail contracts were costing the company $100 million. Despite having built the first half of the guideway, Kiewit ultimately opted not to bid on the next major stretch of guideway and station construction.

]]>Analysis: Lane Could Have Destroyed Thousands of Aging Honolulu Homeshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/analysis-lane-could-have-destroyed-thousands-of-honolulu-homes/
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 10:01:11 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1308779In late August, Hurricane Lane narrowly spared Hawaii’s densest and most populous island from widespread damage. But what if it hadn’t? A new analysis prepared by the Maui-based Pacific Disaster Center estimates how much wreckage Lane would have caused if it had hit Oahu’s southern shore as a Category 1 hurricane instead of breaking apart […]

]]>In late August, Hurricane Lane narrowly spared Hawaii’s densest and most populous island from widespread damage. But what if it hadn’t?

A new analysis prepared by the Maui-based Pacific Disaster Center estimates how much wreckage Lane would have caused if it had hit Oahu’s southern shore as a Category 1 hurricane instead of breaking apart hours before landfall. The impact, it found, would have been devastating to many Honolulu homeowners.

Under the “what-if” scenario, the tropical cyclone would have displaced 3,800 families on Oahu, leaving those mostly wooden homes either severely damaged or completely destroyed by sustained winds of up to 94 miles per hour.

With roofs torn off, walls ripped away or tree branches and other large debris hitting the homes, they “would be in the ‘destroyed’ and ‘major (damage)’ category,” Doug Bausch, PDC’s science advisor, said Tuesday.

The worst of the damage would have centered around Waikiki, according to the analysis, which was presented at a public meeting about Honolulu’s disaster preparedness on Nov 3.

Overall, Oahu would have suffered some $3.7 billion in damage had Lane made landfall at the lowest level possible for hurricane strength. The vast majority of that damage — 94 percent — would have been inflicted on residential property, according to Bausch.

The Alewa Heights neighborhood in Honolulu, overlooking Oahu’s south shore from the Kapalama ridge.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“Wind continues to be our No. 1 potential (threat) in terms of losses, specifically to residential,” he said.

Some 2,300 people with nowhere else to stay would have sought long-term public shelter space, PDC found.

The analysis highlights one of Oahu’s most troubling vulnerabilities: Most of its homes risk severe storm damage, state emergency officials say, because they were built before building codes to strengthen against hurricane winds were enacted.

Hawaii is already grappling with a statewide shortage of emergency shelter space. Officials say they’re doing what they can with the money available to retrofit public buildings and play catch-up. But the aging, private homes pose an additional problem.

Residents in Waianae board up their windows ahead of Hurricane Lane

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

“We can retrofit a shelter space eventually that may fit you, but what are you going to go home to afterward?” said Jennifer Walter, a preparedness branch chief at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. “We get very fixated on the period when the storm is hitting, but imagine the recovery if all those homes are gone.”

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Homes built on Oahu prior to 1995 also generally lacked what’s known as a “continuous load path,” where the roof is firmly tied to the walls and the walls are then firmly tied to the foundation in order to better withstand being torn apart by severe winds.

Nearly 189,000 housing units were built statewide between 1940 and 1995, according to HI-EMA officials, who also used FEMA’s HAZUS tool to get that data.

On Tuesday, Bausch provided data showing more than 185,000 wooden homes currently stand on Oahu.

Retrofits Could Save Older Homes

Many local homeowners have retrofitted their pre-1995 properties, however, to provide better shelter against a storm as strong as a Category 2 hurricane.

“We encourage everyone to strengthen their house,” said Dennis Hwang, a coastal hazard mitigation specialist at the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant College Program. Hwang is among the state’s strongest advocates pushing for home retrofits, and he co-authored a free downloadable handbook for those looking to better protect their homes.

Such retrofits can only go so far with the island’s oldest homes, however. Even with hurricane clips and reinforced foundations, many single-wall construction homes likely would not survive more than a Category 2 storm, Hwang said.

“You can only make it so strong. It’s hard to make a 60-year-old as strong as a 20-year-old person,” he said.

But they could become as strong as a 40-year-old, he added. The same idea goes for single-wall construction, Hwang said.

With Hawaii’s unique topography, a Category 1 hurricane could actually whip peak gusts as strong as a Category 4 storm across the the island’s ridges and valleys, leaving the homes in those corridors even more vulnerable, Bausch said.

Satellite imagery of Hurricane Lane.

NOAA

Hwang also created a custom table for Hawaii residents to better decide whether to shelter-in-place or head to an emergency shelter based on the condition of their house. As more homes get retrofitted, fewer residents potentially would require public shelter space — helping to ease the strain.

Should a hurricane ever bring widespread devastation to Oahu, FEMA trailers would not be an option. “They’re extremely expensive to transport,” said Dolph Diemont, a FEMA federal coordinating officer.

Hawaii’s remote, isolated location poses a unique challenge. Unlike on the U.S. mainland, “you can’t just pull things over the state line and have things stood up,” Walter said. “It just becomes very complex logistically.”

FEMA is currently weighing alternatives to those trailers, however, such as temporary, “modular” homes and converted shipping container spaces that might provide shelter to displaced families instead.

“When you have a complex problem like this, it’s very tempting to try and find that silver bullet that’s going to address it,” Walter said of the state’s ongoing shelter woes. “You see a lot of attention on these issues after something’s happened. What gets really hard is keeping that attention and the funding going when it’s been several years.

]]>Voters Shooting Down HART Board Charter Amendmenthttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/hart-board-charter-amendment-trailing-in-early-returns/
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 05:18:01 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1307823Oahu voters were rejecting Honolulu’s lone charter amendment proposal Tuesday, with the latest returns showing it trailing 53.0 percent to 37.4 percent. The ballot measure was essentially a housekeeping effort to help the local agency overseeing the island’s rail project, making it easier for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board to vote to take […]

“If nothing changes, then nothing will change on the board. It will be status quo,” HART board chairman Damien Kim said of the early results. “It just makes it a little bit more difficult for us.”

But the measure’s failure could also lead to delays on items such as change orders, Kim said. That could lead to more costs on a project that has already seen its share of significant price hikes.

Last year, state leaders boosted the board’s overall membership to 14 as part of their latest multi-billion bailout package to rescue the beleaguered transit project. However, the move also created quorum complications in which eight of the nine voting members must now vote “yes” to pass anything.

The rail guideway along Kamehameha Highway near Aloha Stadium. Under the board’s current quorum rules, even a single “no” vote can prevent action.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The Honolulu charter amendment aimed to change the board’s quorum to six members, and it further specified that only a majority of the voting members would be needed to take action. It also would have added a 10th voting member, to be appointed by the City Council, bringing the total membership to 15.

The question heading into Tuesday’s election was whether most Honolulu voters would support helping HART in any way after several years of staggering cost hikes and schedule delays — and whether voters could properly decode the amendment’s convoluted ballot language.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell expressed doubts last month regarding whether HART and done sufficient community outreach about the measure. HART officials said the agency had a “pretty robust effort underway,” including several television interviews with Kim to better explain the measure.

On Tuesday, reacting to the results, Kim said that HART probably started its outreach too late. Further, Kim surmised that voters simply voted “no” on the measure because it followed the unpopular constitutional convention measure and the invalidated constitutional amendment proposal.

The current eight member-majority voting requirement nearly scuttled a deal with Hawaiian Electric Co. earlier this year to save taxpayers about $130 million in westside utility-line work along the rail line’s elevated guideway.

]]>Honolulu To Take Out Short-Term Loan Of $44 Million To Keep Rail Goinghttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/honolulu-to-take-out-short-term-loan-of-44-million-to-keep-rail-going/
Tue, 06 Nov 2018 05:55:53 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1307643Honolulu city officials will float short-term commercial paper to swiftly raise $44 million for Oahu’s rail project before Nov. 20, a deadline set by an increasingly impatient Federal Transit Administration. Mayor Kirk Caldwell made the announcement Monday, marking the first time city property tax dollars will go toward building rail. The move, enabled by key […]

]]>Honolulu city officials will float short-term commercial paper to swiftly raise $44 million for Oahu’s rail project before Nov. 20, a deadline set by an increasingly impatient Federal Transit Administration.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell made the announcement Monday, marking the first time city property tax dollars will go toward building rail. The move, enabled by key City Council votes last week, reverses a nearly 12-year-old policy and pledges by previous city leaders to only use state and federal tax dollars to complete the transit project.

Now, Oahu taxpayers will fund rail construction not only with state tax revenues but also their city property taxes.

“This has been hard for the council, hard for me,” Caldwell said Monday. “None of us wanted to use property taxes. None of us wanted to pay twice. But this is what we’re faced with.”

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell briefs the media on how the city plans to tap $44 million for rail in the coming weeks as his Budget and Fiscal Services director, Nelson Koyanagi, listens behind him.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Last year’s multibillion-dollar rail bailout package from the state, which is expected to generate at least $2.4 billion for the beleaguered transit project, forced the city to put more “skin in the game.” It required the city to contribute $214 million toward rail’s construction budget.

The $44 million represents the first two years’ payments, and exactly how to cover that amount has consumed much of the council’s time and energy this year. Now, the FTA is demanding that the city pony up or face consequences.

The federal agency hasn’t specified what those consequences might be, but it continues to withhold the remaining $744 million in federal money dedicated to the project. Caldwell and other city officials fear they might lose that money outright if they don’t appease the FTA.

The short-term bonds, essentially a bridge loan, should be floated in the coming week. The move, Caldwell said, was already authorized by the council. City officials plan to use general obligation bonds early next year to pay off the short-term loan.

Last week, some City Council members, including Kymberly Pine, suggested the city consider using its so-called “rainy-day” fund to cover the $44 million in the short term, surmising the move could help the city save on interest payments.

Caldwell rejected that idea, however, saying the move could put the city’s AA-plus bond rating at risk. If the bond rating sinks, costs for the city to borrow on all of its long-term projects — not just rail — would increase.

Further, Caldwell argued, the city’s new obligation to help pay for rail construction technically isn’t an “emergency” covered by its rainy day fund. Instead, Caldwell told Council Chairman Ernie Martin, the fund is reserved for severe downturns, natural disasters or other such emergency situations.

The city has known it would have to pitch in on rail since September 2017.

Caldwell called tax-exempt commercial paper “the least-painful” and “the most open and transparent” way to cover the millions needed in a short amount of time.

Although the FTA is demanding that the city show it the money, the Honolulu Authority for Rail Transportation has said it doesn’t actually need those funds due to its current cash flows.

The city would pay about $150,000 in interest on the stopgap loan, Budget and Fiscal Services Director Nelson Koyanagi told reporters after Caldwell’s briefing Monday.

Under rail’s recovery plan, a step that was also required by the FTA, the city will be making regular payments on its $214 million share through 2027 — long after the terms of Caldwell and council members expire.

“This is not the end of it. There’s going to be further challenges,” Caldwell told reporters Monday.

“But it’s worth all the agony,” he said.

Read Caldwell’s Nov. 5 letter to the Honolulu City Council explaining his decision here:

]]>“Major challenges” with station canopies could stall the planned December 2020 launch of interim service for Oahu’s rail line, project leaders revealed Thursday.

The nearly identical canopy designs for the nine westernmost stations, from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium, have “constructability issues,” according to Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director Andrew Robbins.

The designs by the engineering firm AECOM will need “tweaks” if those structures are to be built, Robbins said.

There was an ”engineering issue in terms of how suitable the design was for construction,” he said after a HART board meeting Thursday. Robbins didn’t elaborate.

A future rail station at the Waipahu Transit Center under construction in December 2017.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

Oahu’s station canopies were originally designed to represent the sails of the modern Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule‘a, and they’re supposed to provide shade and shelter to waiting passengers.

However, cables and conduits that help operate the rail line must also pass through the arms of the canopies, Robbins said. If the canopies are delayed, that would postpone installation of rail’s communications systems as well.

HART staff members recently started dealing with the station challenges on a daily basis because otherwise, “we won’t get there,” Robbins said of the quest to open rail for service as far as Aloha Stadium by the end of 2020.

“I don’t intend to give up,” Robbins told board members.

Toby Martyn, one of four nonvoting HART board members appointed last year by state legislators, brought up the interim opening during the meeting. He said that west Oahu residents have asked him when the interim service will start and he wants to be sure to give them accurate information.

Under HART’s most recent schedule estimates, the launch of the island’s full 20-mile, 21-station rail line won’t happen for another seven years — December 2025 at the earliest.

The interim launch to Aloha Stadium in 2020 has long been touted as a key step to help familiarize the public with the transit system years before the complete line starts running to Ala Moana Center.

Robbins said Thursday that a delay in interim service would not affect rail’s full opening. He did not specify how long the interim service to Aloha Stadium might be delayed. He also said he wasn’t sure of the ridership projections for the interim service, if there are any, and HART staff did not provide any follow-up details.

The nine western stations would need to be completed by September 2019 to leave HART enough time to test the rail system and hit its interim opening goal about a year later, Robbins said.

HART’s Andrew Robbins speaks during a recent Kapolei Hale meeting.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

It’s not the first time the rail station canopies have caused headaches for rail officials. In 2016, the HART board approved a nearly $4 million change order to help cover design revisions to the elevated guideway after the canopies were added to the plan.

Officials realized that in heavy winds the canopies — like the sails they emulate — would create heavier loads. The concrete-and-steel guideway would need to be able to handle them.

Unlike the west-side station canopies, the 12 east-side canopies are being designed by the same company handling construction. So if there are any issues with those canopies they can’t be blamed on a separate designer, Robbins said.

HART has repeatedlyconsidered simplifying the canopy designs as a way to save some costs in the face of budget problems.